Very cool snapshot in time.
It's awesome that we get such a clean and in-depth look into this period of Basho's career. It's amazing how down-to-earth he was, considering the nature of his music (though he mentions how his compositions aren't "far-out" but "far-IN" and very personally meaningful). All I'm saying is that this is cool stuff - give it a listen. And check out this recent radio program that focuses on material like this, also pretty cool:
http://archive.org/details/CosmicTonesAncientProteinStringsOfTheGeneticCode